The Burger at ‘21’

You know the “21 Club,” right? You’ve driven by it a hundred times…wondered what it would be like inside? I’ve wondered too. Lunch with a friend provided the excuse to find out.

The restaurant has a long history, briefly chronicled in a recent William Grimes Q&A on the New York Times website. It actually started as a dive bar in the Village called the Red Head (no relation to the current restaurant by that name). The present incarnation is anything but a dive; in fact, it has some of the highest à la carte prices of any restaurant in the city.

It is not actually a “Club,” but it has a clubby feel. Most of the patrons seemed to be old-money regulars, whom the host greeted warmly. But they’re also mostly over 60, and therein lies the problem. Who will dine here twenty years from now? In a bid to attract the younger generation, last year, “21” stopped requiring neckties for gentlemen. Restaurants much fancier than “21” stopped doing so years ago. Jackets remain de rigeur, and most of the customers still wear ties anyway.

The space is cozy and comfortable, but in fact, not all that fancy. (I should clarify that we dined in the downstairs “bar room”; there is a more formal upstairs dining room that I have not seen.)

Prices are at nosebleed levels, with appetizers $15–24 and entrées $30–42. Prices are the same at dinner, but a few extra (more expensive) entrées are available. The website touts a lunch prix fixe at $30, but it was not offered to us.

My friend recommended the burger—famous enough that the Times has printed the recipe twice (here, here). It was a large, beefy mass, slightly over-cooked but still very good. The shoestring fries that came with it were perfect. But it’s $30, and I’ve had better ones at half the price.

The kitchen accommodated our request to share a Caesar Salad ($18); even after it was divided, there was plenty for each of us. A plate of cookies afterwards was free. Sodas were served in the bottle ($6 apiece), but there was no charge for a refill.

Still, $90 before tax and tip is an awful lot for salads and burgers. I won’t be rushing back.

21 Club (21 W. 52nd Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

Sea Urchin and Steak at Marea

I went back to Marea last week to sample two of the dishes mentioned in Sam Sifton’s three-star love letter.

I don’t know how Marea’s menu will evolve, but there is one item that will never come off. Not after this:

The very first item on the menu at Marea is ricci, a piece of warm toast slathered with sea urchin roe, blanketed in a thin sheet of lardo, and dotted with sea salt. It offers exactly the sensation as kissing an extremely attractive person for the first time — a bolt of surprise and pleasure combined. The salt and fat give way to primal sweetness and combine in deeply agreeable ways. The feeling lingers on the tongue and vibrates through the body. Not bad at $14 a throw — and there are two on each plate.

Well…I had it. Yes, it is very good. But no, it isn’t as good as a first kiss. My body did not vibrate in deeply agreeable ways.

Then came the steak, or perhaps I should say, the “Creekstone Farms 50-day dry-aged sirloin,” which according to Sifton, “would do epic battle with the beef at any steakhouse in town.”

Yes, it is an excellent slab of meat, served on the bone for good measure. What Marea lacks is the 2,000 degree ovens the better steakhouses have. So there is no exterior char, just the faint hint of cross-hatching. It’s a decent escape-hatch dish for the non-fish-eater in your party, but for $47 you’ll do better at restaurants that make their living at steak.

I’d thrown my diet to the wind anyway, so I figured one last cheat wouldn’t do much harm. Affogato ($13) doesn’t do much calorie damage—or so I imagined. It’s zabaglione gelato, espresso, and amaro: dessert and coffee combined in one glass.

I dined at the bar, where service is friendly. The bartenders told me they’d had plenty of laughs over Sifton’d description of the sea urchin toast, but everyone at the restaurant was relieved to have their three stars.

At some point I’ll be back to sample more of the pastas and fish. Sifton’s idea of visiting for the steak is just nutty. For now, we stand by the two stars we’ve awarded on two prior visits.

Marea (240 Central Park West between Seventh Avenue & Broadway, West Midtown)

Marea

I have a perverse fascination with Marea. Our first visit was not exactly impressive. I went back with a colleague and had a meal that, if not stellar, was at least solid. Cooking the food without significant errors is progress.

But I have not yet seen anything that would justify the rapturous reviews given by critics I respect, like Alan Richman and Ryan Sutton. I keep wondering, “What have I missed?”

The other night, I was in the area and stopped in again for an appetizer, a couple of cocktails, and dessert. The cocktails were very well made; I particularly loved The Diplomat, an Italian re-interpretation of a Manhattan. A couple more of those, and they would have had to carry me home.

Getting a bartender’s attention was a consistently a challenge, except towards the end of the evening when the crowds had cleared out. They serve a full menu at the bar, but it doesn’t occur to them to offer the menu. A cocktail list is dropped off, and before you can blink the bartender has disappeared again.

Baccala ($18; above left) is a house-made salt cod, impeccably prepared in itself, but given little help by the heirloom tomatoes and watercress purée. I mean, why those vegetables with that fish? But I adored the Zuchine ($12; above right), a zucchini tort with lemon crema frozen yogurt, with which the bartender comped a glass of dessert wine. That’s what you want from a three-star restaurant—food you can’t get out of your head, even days after you’ve eaten it.

The à la carte menu structure at least means that one can dip into Marea periodically without committing to a four-course meal. And I suppose I will keep looking for the magic. Sam Sifton’s verdict for the Times awaits.

Marea (240 Central Park West between Seventh Avenue & Broadway, West Midtown)

Food: **
Service: **
Ambiance: ***
Overall: **

Oceana

The latest trend among upscale restaurants is the relocation. Bouley moved to a custom built chateau half-a-block away from the old Tribeca spot. Aureole moved from an old world townhouse to the bustle of the theater district. Dowdy San Domenico abandoned Central Park for Madison Park.

And Oceana has moved from an east-side townhouse to the MacGraw-Hill building, convenient to Rockefeller Center and the Sixth Avenue office district, as well as the pre-theater crowd.

All four of these restaurants were expensive before and are expensive still, but only Bouley went upscale. The other three are more casual than they were before, less taxing on the wallet, and have informal front rooms for bar dining that they previously lacked. This is not to say that they were renovated on the cheap—indeed, major coin was dropped on all three. But these restaurants, in different ways, are trying to win a new fine-dining audience that their old places, for varying reasons, could no longer attract.

The food at Oceana has always been acclaimed. Under chefs Rick Moonen, Cornelius Gallagher, and now Ben Pollinger, the restaurant has always had three New York Times stars, most recently from Frank Bruni in an ill-timed mid-2008 review, published just after the move to Sixth Avenue was announced. The space, which resembled the interior of an ocean liner, seemed passé and a bit cramped. Our only meal at the old Oceana was on Valentine’s Day three years ago. It was, as special-occasion meals often are, a mixed bag.

The new Oceana is spacious, bright, and modern. There’s a big fish tank in front of a partly-open kitchen. The walls are decorated with unobtrusive nautical artwork. This is what the John Dory would have looked like, if Ken Friedman had taste. About half the tables have white tablecloths, and half don’t. I don’t recall seeing that design choice at any other restaurant, but it seemed to work here—perhaps because we were seated at one of the former.

There are changes, too, behind the scenes. The chef told us that he has six times the amount of kitchen space for double the number of dining-room seats. He gave us a tour of the facilities afterwards. We haven’t seen a kitchen this spacious since Per Se.

In the dining room, the prix fixe (formerly $78) has been jettisoned in favor of a carte. The menu sprawls a bit more than I would like, though not as badly as Marea. On average, you’ll spend less than the original prix fixe, though of course it is possible to spend a lot more. There’s the obligatory raw bar ($3–8 per piece, plateaux at $44 or $120); soups, salads and appetizers in two categories ($12–19), main courses in four categories ($28–48; plus fish by the pound that can go higher), and sides ($7–10).

The entrées are a choice of composed main courses, whole fish, “simply prepared” fish, or meats; and there’s a separate list of optional sauces. It is a bit daunting, and I always wonder if the kitchen can actually keep up the quality when trying to paint over such a large canvass. In any event, everything we had was excellent.

The amuse-bouche (above left) was a lobster bisque. The bread (above right) was apparently baked in house, though I found it a bit too tough.

Seafood Sausage Stuffed Calamari ($17; above left) was one of the best appetizers we’ve had all year, with calamari serving as the “casing” for a rich, hearty sausage. We wondered whether Garganelli ($18; above right) was just a token pasta dish (the only one listed), but the combination of smoked shrimp, cranberry beans, and pancetta was wonderful.

Curried Red Snapper ($72; for two people) was deep-fried, but not the least bit greasy—as good a fish as we’ve had in a long time. A server filleted it expertly tableside (he told us he used to do 200 fish per day at Esca).

A side dish of Black Sticky Rice ($7; no photo) was too clumpy. It was the evening’s only misfire.

We usually skip dessert, but had to try a Sweet Potato–Almond Soufflé, which was excellent. The petits-fours were a bit underwhelming, but by then it hardly mattered. Throughout the evening, service was practically perfect, as a restaurant this expensive should be.

The wine list is heavily French, with good selections at all price ranges. Eric Asimov’s wine column last week was about the Jura, a region seldom featured on New York wine lists. Sure enough, Oceana had one, at $57, the Jacques Puffeney “Cuvée Sacha, 2001. The sommelier accurately described its nutty flavor, so we ordered it and were not disappointed.

We are not quite sure why, but the wine and two cocktails were comped. We never introduce ourselves as food bloggers, and though the staff surely noticed our camera, lots of people take photos without posting a review—not that this blog is that influential anyway. Anyhow, it was rather dull-witted of us not to notice this until the next morning, as we would have left a much larger tip.

We point this out in the interest of full disclosure, but we are quite sure that our conclusion would have been the same. We were sold on Oceana.

Oceana (1221 Sixth Avenue at 49th Street, McGraw-Hill Building, West Midtown)

Food: ***
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

Aureole

Note: This is a review under chef Chris Lee, who left the restaurant in December 2010. Chrisophe Belanca, the former chef of Le Cirque, replaced him for five months, then departed in April 2011. The current head man is Marcus Ware, a sous chef who had been with Aureole for four years, dating back to its Upper East Side townhouse days.

*

If you want to time the stock market, don’t ask Charlie Palmer. In 1988, he opened Aureole on the Upper East Side just in time for a recession. This summer, he moved the restaurant to Bryant Park—again, right in the middle of a recession.

Palmer seems to be recession-proof. He has at least sixteen restaurants to his name—opening, it seems, about one per year, in a career long enough to have weathered the economy’s ups and downs. He hasn’t actually run the kitchen at Aureole since 2001. The list of chefs who’ve worked for him is like a Who’s Who of the restaurant industry.

His relationship with the critics has been up and down. At River Café, he got two stars from Marian Burros in 1984, then three from Bryan Miller in 1986. At Aureole, Miller gave him two stars in 1989 and upgraded him to three in 1991.

The tony Upper East Side townhouse on East 61st Street, for which Palmer paid $3 million in 1987, got a facelift in 1999, prompting a re-visit by William Grimes, who promptly knocked the restaurant back down to two stars. My only visit was perhaps a year or two later. What sticks in my mind is not the utterly forgettable food, but an irritating electronic wine list that resembled an Amazon Kindle (before such things existed). I’m a gadget guy, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Last year, Palmer decided to move to the Bank of America building at Bryant Park. He hopes that his loyal Upper East Side regulars will folow him there, while he picks up business clients and theatergoers who wouldn’t venture to the old location. He’s on an ugly block, but the space has an $8 million makeover by Adam Tihany, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the last half-dozen projects Tihany has done.

If Tihany’s work is unoriginal, at least it’s effective. The new Aureole, like so many luxury restaurants these days, is a bifurcated space, with a spacious, bustling bar room and a quiet dining room. As there’s nothing to see on 42nd Street, Tihany gave dining room patrons a view of the bar room, dominated by a towering wine wall that puts most others to shame. Soft fabric wallpaper absorbs sound, even when the room is nearly full, as it was last Saturday evening

I have my doubts about the bar room, where most of the dinner entrées are above $30, and a burger is $19. At those prices, Aureole won’t be my first choice for a bar dinner.

The dining room offers an $84 prix fixe and a rather odd $115 parallel tasting menu (eight courses served in pairs). The prix fixe is comparable to other restaurants in Aureole’s league, assuming the food lives up to it.

Chef Christopher Lee, who won two Michelin stars at Gilt, has been running the kitchen since earlier this year. The menu is a mixture of his own ideas and Palmer’s own classics. If he can ace every meal the way he aced ours, he should win back the third star that William Grimes took away.

The amuse-bouche was a plate-cleansing raw scallop (above left).

The “Scallop Sandwich” (above left) has been on Aureole’s menu from the beginning. Bryan Miller found “a brittle lid of sauteed potatoes…atop the meltingly tender scallops glossed with a citric-edged shellfish stock,” but Grimes it “a very oily eating experience.” As of today, the dish is a winner again, with a delicate nugget of seared foie gras as a bonus.

Another Foie Gras appetizer (above right) is an appealing marriage of unlikely ingredients: blueberries, corn bread, pickled jalapenos, and macadamia nuts.

Crispy Black Sea Bass (above left) was flawless, and an extremely generous portion too.

Another dish, styled “Canadian Lobster Tail vs. Berkshire Pork Belly” (above right) was an example of the side-by-side entrées that the new Aureole seems to favor. Oddly enough, it carried no supplement—the only entrée that did was King Salmon ($10). Anyhow, we thought the lobster won this duel by a narrow margin.

I don’t recall what was in the pre-dessert (shown left), but the desserts themselves were terrific. I adored a sweet corn soufflé (below left), a preparation I do not recall seeing on any other menu. (No doubt someone will write in that Ducasse did it 20 years ago, but in any case it was new to me.)

Cheeses (below right), sourced from Austria and Germany, were wonderful too.

A selection of petits-fours followed, of which we chose three from a larger selection, along with warm brown sugar beignets.

The large wine list (in a printed book this time) took a while to digest, but it was well worth it. Focused on France, with cameos from other nations, there are choices ranging from $40 to four figures. A $66 Volnay, near but not at the bottom of the list, was terrific.

I assume that Palmer brought his service team over from 61st Street. Their work was polished, their choreography a pleasure to watch. We started dinner with a cocktail, and we appreciated that we were not rushed into ordering. They wisely understood that we wanted time to relax.

Many upscale restaurants are re-tooling these days, including Bouley, Café Boulud, Chanterelle, and Oceana. It’s a little too facile to say that they’re all going downscale. Bouley actually got fancier, and while Aureole has added a more casual bar room, the dining room is very much in the spirit of the former location. Except it’s better.

Aureole (One Bryant Park [42nd Street W. of Sixth Avenue], West Midtown)

Food: ***
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

Gordon Ramsay's Maze at the London

Soothsayers have been predicting the demise of Gordon Ramsay at the London, but for now it is alive and well. We visited Maze, the casual front room, on Friday night, and it was reasonably close to full. The main dining room appeared to be better than half full—not bad for a summer weekend.

None of this changes the fact that Gordon Ramsay is completely off the radar in New York. The restaurant took a critical drubbing when it opened 2½ years ago, and I suspect it is surviving on visitor traffic alone. I cannot remember the last local review, blog entry or message board post. It probably wasn’t within the last year.

We’ve visited the main dining room twice (here, here), finding it on both occasions better than the critics did. The Michelin inspectors agreed too, awarding two stars. Like many upscale restaurants, Gordon Ramsay has an informal front room, here dubbed “Maze,” which is meant to offer slightly less formal cuisine a more accessible à la carte price point.

Maze is a somewhat ill-defined concept. There are about a dozen small plates priced from $13–20, plus four “market specials” (essentially entrées) $20–38. The server advised that three of the small plates would make a suitable meal, but they come in widely varying sizes, and it’s tough to tell what you’re getting. We decided to share two of those and two entrées.

The atmosphere is tough to decipher. There are no tablecloths, tables are close together, and the restaurant shares space with the bar, where cocktails are $17. Yet, service is rather formal, with a flotilla of sauces and broths applied tableside, and a wine list where you’ll struggle to find much below $60. At least the wine comes properly chilled.

If dinner had ended with the appetizers, I might have been tempted to award three stars. A terrine of tête de veau (above left) with caramelized sweetbreads and green bean salad was superb. So was a silken filet of fluke (above right), in a portion that could very well have been an entrée.

But duck breast (above left) was rubbery and a pork chop (above right) was over-cooked. Both dishes were fine in their conception, but the same heavy hand at the meat station had ruined them.

We got plenty of attention when we sat down, and the food came out reasonably promptly, but after the restaurant filled up we felt a bit neglected. The space is pleasant, and if the rest of the food were as good as our appetizers we would feel more confident about returning.

Maze at the London Hotel (151 W. 54th St. between Sixth & Seventh Avenues)

Food: *½
Service: *½
Ambiance: *½
Overall: *½

Marea

Chris Cannon and Micheal White, owner & chef respectively of the new restaurant Marea, are too smart to actually announce that they are gunning for four stars. That hasn’t stopped others (Ben Leventhal, Mister Cutlets) from making ambitious predictions on their behalf, but Messrs. Cannon and White have been wisely silent.

You just know it’s true, though. White has earned three NYT stars on a trio of occasions—at Fiamma Osteria, where he no longer works, and at Alto & Convivio, where he still does. You just know he wouldn’t have signed up for $700,000 in annual rent and a luxurious make-over of the old San Domenico space, if all he wanted was another three-star restaurant.

When I saw the opening menu, my heart sank: it featured over 85 items in almost a dozen categories. No three- or four-star restaurant tries to serve so many things, especially in the early days. It is often a recipe for disaster; it is seldom a prescription for excellence.

When we visited on Saturday evening, we found a menu slightly simplified, but it still offered over 70 items, or about double what it should, even allowing that some of them are crudi or raw bar selections that require minimal preparation. The unfortunate result was predictable: rubbery squid; cold pasta; over-cooked sturgeon.

The restaurant also has the same problem that plagued San Domenico: it is a large space, and it is difficult for a kitchen to keep up, especially when so many of the dishes are as overwrought as they are here. We know that Michael White can cook, but predictions that he would get four stars out of the gate seem to us premature—that is, assuming Frank Bruni doesn’t have a lobotomy between now and August.

Marea means tide in Italian, and the cuisine is all seafood, aside from a couple of bail-out dishes for landlubbers. The menu is hedged for the economy, as it naturally would be. It suggests, in small print, the four-course prix fixe at $89. You can still order à la carte and get out for less money, although by no means cheaply.

Just to list all of the menu categories is exhausting: snacks to share ($9–14); crudi ($11–17, or $23 for three); six kinds of oysters ($3.50 ea.; $35 per dozen); caviar; antipasti ($17–24); primi and risotti ($24–36), secondi ($35–47), whole fish & shellfish ($39–49 per pound). The whole fish offer a choice from among four sauces and six sides; there seems to be no way to order the sides separately.

It took us quite a while to absorb all of this. The $89 prix fixe precludes the whole fish; you can choose one antipasto or crudo, one pasta or risotto, and one secondo, though a number of them carry supplements. We finally decoded the whole menu and were ready to order.

Polipo, or grilled octopus (above left) was a rubbery disaster, rendering irrelevant the bed of rice, fava beans, and yellow tomatoes on which it lay.

Tartare of Hawaiian blue prawns, chanterelles, and almonds (above right) was fine, but a bit flat. The almonds were draped casually over the top of the tartare, but not really integrated in the dish. We had similar misgivings about most of the things we tried.

Gramigna (above left) caught my eye because it wedded smoked cod and speck, along with leeks and gremolata. It was the more successful of our two pastas, but for the life of us we couldn’t detect any smoked cod. “I wonder if they forgot it,” my girlfriend remarked.

Ferratini (above right) arrived not warm enough, and it also suffered from poorly calibrated ingredients. It allegedly contained manila clams, calamari, and hot chilies, but the latter ingredient was singular. We counted just one chili, and it contributed nothing to the flavor of the dish.

A long wait ensued for the secondi. We were in no hurry, but the delay foretold another culinary misfire. Storione, or Columbia river sturgeon (above left) arrived tasting like dry sponge, along with another miscellaneous mixture of ingredients—chanterelles, spring garlic, and citrus.

Seppia, or grilled Mediterranean cuttlefish (above right) seemed to have been correctly prepared, and it was somewhat more intriguing, as one is seldom served the whole animal. But again, it had little to do with its dance partners: braised escarole, livornese sauce, and wild oregano.

Dessert was the only fully successful course: a pineapple cheesecake with coconut sorbet (above left); a panna cotta with blueberries (above right). [This is the only course for which I do not have a printed menu, so these descriptions might not be quite right.]

There were no amuse courses, as one normally expects at a restaurant serving an $89 prix fixe. The breads were excellent, especially a focaccia; at the end, a meager quartet of chocolate petits-fours was yet another reminder of the amenities Marea still lacks, in light of its price range.

When the kitchen is under control, Marea will be a lovely place to dine. The multi-million dollar rehab of the dowdy old San Domenico space is stunning, without being ostentatious. You can’t avoid noticing how lovely it is, but it doesn’t get in your way. The serving pieces are lovely too, including a gorgeous charger plate I’d love to take home.

The staff render polished service. The lengthy wine list has plenty for the $50-and-under crowd (like us). A sommelier visited our table unbidden and immediately directed us to a happy choice in our price range. When we got home, I realized I hadn’t taken a copy of the menu and would have no hope of remembering all of the Italian names and ingredients. I called the restaurant back, and they emailed it to me that same evening. At 12:15 a.m.

We do not doubt that Marea is capable of turning out multi-star food. On some days, and for some guests, it may be doing so now. But nothing we tried, even had it been executed properly, approached the potential of the city’s gold standard for seafood, Le Bernardin. Perhaps it is a disservice to Michael White that anyone suggested Marea was in the same league.

Sadly, Chef White now cannot take the one obvious step that would improve Marea tremendously, which is to cut the menu in half. That would smell of desperation—admitting defeat just as the critics are starting to take their measure of the place. So he will continue to tinker around the edges and hope that he can send out winners when he has to.

Marea (240 Central Park West between Seventh Avenue & Broadway, West Midtown)

Food: *
Service: **½
Ambiance: ***
Overall: **

Benoit

Note: This is a review under Chef Pierre Schaedelin, who left the restaurant in October 2010. Click here for a review under his replacement, the former Payard and Balthazar chef, Philippe Bertineau.

*

We returned to Benoit last Saturday—our third visit (past reviews here, here). The good news is that Benoit is doing well: it was as crowded as I’ve seen it since the opening weeks, this time last year. The bad news is that the service was slow, with long waits even for basic things, such as getting a wine list.

To start, we shared the charcuterie platter with cornichons and Dijon mustard ($42; below). Though nominally a serving for two, our group of three was unable to polish it off. Only at Bar Boulud have we seen a charcuterie assortment this good, this varied. I’m hard pressed to say which is better.

Unfortunately, that left us not very hungry for our main courses (not the restaurant’s fault). My girlfriend had the Steak aux Poivres ($38) and my mother the trio of Colorado Lamb ($36). Both struck us as competently done without being, in any sense, special.

The Braised Pork Shank ($21; above) was a fascinating dish, unlike anything I have ever seen. It was a hefty hunk of smoked ham, braised on the bone and flaked with a spicy mustard sauce. I am not a fan of smoked ham and probably wouldn’t have ordered it if I had realized how it was prepared—the menu just said “pork.” However, the dish was beautifully prepared, and I cannot really fault anything except the description.

Benoit is still uneven, but for its best items, the restaurant is well worth a return visit. The slow service dismayed us, but I am hoping we caught them on a bad night.

Food: **
Service: *
Ambiance: **
Overall: **

Seäsonal Restaurant & Weinbar

Note: Seäsonal closed at the end of 2014 after a six-year run. The chefs sold the lease to Maria Loi, the Greek chef, who will replace it with Loi Estiatorio.

*

It’s not easy for a restaurant to exceed expectations. Most new places are heavily over-promoted, establishing high hopes that few can hope to meet. Seäsonal Restaurant and Weinbar has the opposite problem. It has been open since December 2008, but among major publications only Crain’s gave it a full review (two stars from Bob Lape). The Times gave it the Dining Briefs treatment (mostly favorable, from Julia Moskin).

Seäsonal deserves far more attention than that. It serves modern Austrian cuisine, an under-represented genre in New York. With David Bouley’s Danube now closed, Kurt Gutenbrunner’s Wallsé is the only restaurant even close to comparable. We gave Wallsé three stars, and while we’re not yet prepared to bestow the same laurels on Seäsonal, we were certainly impressed.

The menu is mid-priced, with appetizers $9–18 (most $14 or less), entrées $21–32 (most $27 or less), side dishes $7, desserts $10. A seven-course tasting menu is $64. These prices are more than fair, given the quality of everything we tried.

As you’d expect for a wine bar, there’s an ample selection of wines by the glass. The bottle list is a bit more expensive than it ought to be, with few choices below $50. We settled on an Austrian Pinot Noir at $48, which was about the cheapest red wine available.

The minimalist décor looked more Scandinavian than Austrian to us, but we found it quiet and comfortable. On a Wednesday evening, the space was less than half full.

We started with a nice amuse-bouche of smoked duck (right). As I recall, there were two kinds of home-made bread, and two contrasting butters to go with it.

 

Cheese Ravioli ($12; above left) defied the Austrian food cliché: they were light as a feather, complemented with smoked mushrooms, baby spinach, and a harvest corn sauce. My friend was equally pleased with the Foie Gras Terrine ($18; above right), with a lingonberry-mandarin confit and toasted brioche on the side.

The entrées were terrific too: Pumpkin-Seed Crusted Black Sea Bass ($26; above left) with a butternut squash and black truffle sauce, and Duck Breast ($27; above right) with red cabbage and Schupfnudeln.

The meal ended with a small plate of petits-fours. Service lived up to the quality of the food. The bar tab was transferred to our table without our having to ask.

The restaurant’s location, in the middle of a quiet midtown street, does not work to its advantage. People need to know it’s there. I came in expecting a decent neighborhood place, but left with the idea that Seäsonal needs to be taken far more seriously.

Seäsonal (132 W. 58th Street between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, West Midtown)

Food: ★★
Service: ★★
Ambiance: ★★
Overall: ★★

In Brief: Beacon

Note: Beacon closed in late 2012 after 13 years in business, due to a rent increase that the restaurant could not absorb.

I had the $35 prix fixe on Thursday, a follow-up to the pre-theater supper we enjoyed there the week before. (I gave much more background in my earlier post.)

I can’t stress enough how solid this place is. They’re not doing anything complicated, but what they do is executed perfectly. I had the wood-roasted oysters, the rotisserie chicken, and the ginger bread pudding. The chef–owner, Waldy Malouf, thinks of the little things, like serving warm milk with coffee.

Beacon (25 W. 56th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

Food: **
Service: **
Ambiance: **
Overall: **